The US is spewing
out the war rhetoric. Anti-Obamaites say that ISIS poses a new
threat, that Obama created ISIS by his lack of martial fervor and now
ISIS has declared war on the "homeland" itself, that the world
has changed (yet again). Have they forgotten that Osama bin-Laden
very publicly declared war on the U.S. after our troops stayed in
Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War? We paid little heed to his
threat, but he developed al-Qaeda and they eventually found their
way to the attacks on 9/11. After the second war on Iraq,
al-Qaeda-in-Iraq emerged to fill the void left by Paul Bremmer's
demobilized Iraqi army. When it started to go on the offensive,
al-Qaeda-in-Iraq changed its name to Islamic State, referred to in
the United States as ISIS or ISIL. So there is a terrible continuity
between the current threat from ISIS, and that which bin-Laden made
five presidents before this one. The terrorists are eager for America
to declare war; it would be a perfect fuel for their apocalyptic
mission. With martyred fighters for inspiration and civilian
casualties to fuel rage, ISIS could count on future fighters to
replace them even if they are all killed.

John McCain ,
Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz and many others of both parties wants to
take the fight to ISIS over there so "we don't have to do it at
home." They know that this will mean thousands of innocent civilian
deaths and great suffering for an entire region. They will willingly
perpetuate this death and suffering in order to pretend to prevent
any potential American loss of life. Morally this is obscene. The
people who live under the yoke of ISIS or others like Syria's
president Bashar Assad are already suffering beyond what most
Americans could imagine. Their lives matter no less than ours. To
advocate trading their lives for a foolish illusion of our safety at
home is cruel, naïve and disastrously counter-productive.

Obama seems to
understand the foolhardy nature of an all out ground war, but his
preferred method is only maginally better. Every Tuesday morning when
he goes to the who-are-we-going-to-kill-by-drone-this-week? meeting,
he knows that for every dead jihadi, there will be a replacement
ready to be martyred. And for every innocent murdered -"collateral
damage" is the only accepted term - there will be countless numbers
of people in the world who grow more bitter towards the U.S. and who
will have more tolerance for radicalism in their midst. Unlike our
politicians, these victims don't seem to be civilized enough to know
that using a drone "signature strike" to blow up civilians and
militants into little pieces is morally superior and forgivable,
compared to barbarically beheading someone with a sword. All they
know is that they are being targeted because of their faith and their
geography. And they are disinclined to dissuade young men from
fighting back. Obama at least seems to understand that it is already
too late to prevent terror attacks by home-grown Americans who have
become radicalized in response to current events. As we have learned
about the San Bernadino murderers, they had been radicallized for a
number of years and it would be folly not to think that there are
others like them, biding their time in obscurity until they too have
an opportunity to act.

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ISIS greatest
strength is its propaganda. It has invested heavily in human and
economic resources to radicalize people over the internet. It needs
America to be a large and worthy enemy if it wants to rally jihadi
fighters and would-be terrorists. If America is so foolish as to take
the bait and "carpet bomb ISIS" (Ted Cruz) , or "blow up the
refineries.[until]..there would be nothing left" (Donald Trump),
then we will be fulfilling ISIS' most fervent wish. ISIS knows how
difficult it is to infiltrate terrorists into the U.S. from abroad,
where every border or security check has the potential to disrupt
their efforts. They know that the most effective way to instill
terror in the hearts of Americans is for us to be attacked from
within by our own citizens. They want us to stop trusting each other,
to become suspicious of every activity that takes place around us.
They especially want the nation as a whole to target Muslims as a
group and Islam as a religion. ISIS needs a solid basis of discontent
for Muslims in America in order to have any chance that some of them
might become radicalized launch attacks in the U.S.

Since the attacks
on 9/11, compared to 385,000 gun deaths in this country, there have
been less than 500 deaths by terrorist attacks. About half of those
have been the work of right-wing or Christian extremists and about
half have been linked to Islamic extremists. Yet the national
conversation is about how many of our civil liberties we will
jettison in exchange for an illusion of safety. Don't we understand
that if indeed the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, as we're so
often told, then to abridge those freedoms at first chance we will be
playing right into their hands. They will be winning their
ideological war with far greater effect than they will from their
territorial gains in the Maghreb.

The only way to beat
the terrorists is to show by our actions, not just our words, that
America is not only tolerant but welcoming to all. We have to show
every day that what they say about us is a lie. This is not easy,
because our actions often belie our ideals. Every time a mosque is
vandalized, or another young black person is killed by the police, or
some fool of a politician tries to close the borders or bar refugees
from his state, every time a young family of color finds themselves
not welcomed in a neighborhood, every time a man wearing Guccis can't
be bothered to drop some money in homeless person's hat, every time
that Americans choose not to live up to the American ideals
emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty, the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence, and instead succumb to our baser
instincts of xenophobia, prejudice, greed and mistrust, we are sowing
the seeds to our own destruction. The genocide of Native Americans
and the taking of their land and its riches led us to believe that we
were destined to rule the Earth. Our belief in slavery led to the
civil war. Our white privilege has led to generations of suffering
and turmoil that continues to this day. If we choose now to fan the
flames of prejudice and intolerance, if we treat brown, black and
Muslim Americans (and immigrants) as potential enemies to be walled
out or watched, if we plunge into another military quagmire, then we
won't be safe and we will be sorry. We can't really embrace and
repeat our worst mistakes all over again. Can we?

"One of the primary means of human communication, internal and external, is storytelling. Here, in Bottom-Up, Rob Kall is challenging humanity to tell itself a new story, one designed to free us from hierarchicalism to a more egalitarian, interconnected web of meaning."